32 | New Scientist | 6 November 2021
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Editor’s pick
How the news of feathered
dinosaurs lifted off
16 October, p 43
From Jeff Hecht,
Auburndale, Massachusetts, US
As the reporter who broke the
story of the discovery of feathered
dinosaurs, I enjoyed Michael
Benton’s feature. It was in fact New
Scientist that carried my story, just
before the work was unveiled at the
Society of Vertebrate Paleontology
meeting at the American Museum
of Natural History in New York.
Before the meeting, I picked up
reports of a surprising discovery in
China. After some detective work,
a contact told me it was “a little
feathered dinosaur”. I persuaded
the news editor to squeeze it into
the upcoming issue. To follow up,
I took the train from Boston to New
York and slept on my sister’s couch
in the suburbs so I could attend the
meeting. I then went on to write
about palaeontologists travelling
to China to see the feathered fossil.
This was one of the most exciting
stories I have covered, one that
revolutionised our understanding
of dinosaurs and birds.Children are natural
scientists until school
16 October, p 36
From Sam Edge,
Ringwood, Hampshire, UK
From your review of Ada Twist,
Scientist, I am looking forward to
seeing it. However, it occurred to
me that young children don’t need
to be encouraged to be scientists.
My granddaughter’s second
birthday is coming up and she
has been engaging in increasingly
sophisticated experimental
investigations since she was
old enough to hold things.
My impression is that, in
pursuit of government league
table success, UK schools educate
scientific curiosity out of children
because it is incompatible with
the inflexible, one-way nature
of the national curriculum.According to the increasingly
disillusioned teachers with
whom I have discussed this, even
science subjects are taught as a
set of handed-down facts to learn
so as to pass the exams, not as a
framework of knowledge with
which to ask questions.Recycling systems need
to cover much more
25 September, p 18
From Graham Jones,
Bridgham, Norfolk, UK
Regarding the debate over a bin
tax to encourage recycling, we
need systems that can deal with
many kinds of waste. There
is already one for anaerobic
digestion of all organic matter:
the sewage treatment system. In
principle, the methane it produces
could be fed into the grid and help
reduce the currently rising price
of gas. If it could take kitchen and
garden waste; agricultural waste,
such as straw and manure; culled
animals; building waste, such as
cardboard and wood; and even
human cadavers, then the amount
of methane generated might be
significant and useful.A paradoxical problem
in the black hole paradox
25 September, p 34
From Frank Scott, Sydney, Australia
In his article on the black hole
information paradox, Paul Davies
postulates a “residual connection
reaching across the event horizon”
between entangled pairs of
particles of Hawking radiation.
One particle travels back across
the event horizon of the black
hole, and the other travels away.
With one of the pair moving
towards intense gravity and the
other away from it, wouldn’t the
entanglement be immediatelybroken by the disparity in the
passage of time experienced
by each particle?
If their entanglement isn’t
broken, what effect would
synchronising between different
timescales have on the particles’
information?Not quite time for AI to
show human-like skills
Letters, 23 October
Eric Kvaalen,
Les Essarts-le-Roi, France
Robert Checchio writes that “the
GPT-3 AI discussed in your article
is reported to have 175 billion
artificial neurons (twice that of a
human brain)” and so some might
expect human-like behaviour to
appear soon. But in your feature
(9 October), you said 175 billion
parameters, not neurons, roughly
equivalent to the number of
synapses. You also indicate that
the human brain has “150 trillion”
synapses, meaning GPT-3 is nearly
a thousand times smaller.The promise of eradicating
Lyme disease
16 October, p 24
From Stephanie Woodcock,
Truro, Cornwall, UK
A reliably safe and effective
treatment for Lyme disease in
humans would be a prize indeed.
If hygromycin A were to live up
to its early promise and become
a medicine for acute Lyme disease,
it would not only be a welcome
development for new patients, but
it might also have implications for
established patients because it
might provide a double-check on
the current diagnostic system.
An estimated 10 per cent of
people with Lyme disease report
continuing ill health in spite of
treatment and can be subjectto having their Lyme diagnosis
questioned (6 June 2020, p 40).
If research goes as hoped and a
medicine results, a humane way
of proceeding might be to offer
people with a Lyme or Lyme-like
symptomatology an exploratory
round of the new treatment. Given
that diagnosis status still largely
relies on blood tests, which don’t
seem completely reliable, this
would be a chance to learn more
about the needs of these patients.
However, such spirochaetal
diseases should be treated as early
as possible for the best outcome.
Trying a treatment after time had
elapsed would be a voyage into the
unknown for longer-term patients
and it would be better not to raise
unrealistic hopes.It is time to forget about
repressed memories
9 October, p 44
From Annie Campbell,
Lane End, Buckinghamshire, UK
I am grateful to Jessica Hamzelou
for her insightful article on
repressed memory, or dissociative
amnesia as it is now termed.
Whatever it is called, it has led to
many vulnerable people being let
down by those they sought help
from, causing great damage.
After qualifying as a
psychologist in 2000, I was
appalled at the seeming obsession
of some fully trained professional
therapists or counsellors about
abuse and their assumption that
it was likely to have occurred, with
no evidence of this being the case.
There is a condition called
transient global amnesia in which
a traumatic event isn’t stored by
the brain at all, thus no amount
of therapy could “retrieve” it, but
no scientific evidence that detailed
traumatic memories are hidden
away and can be revealed later
by a therapist. I hope this article
helps to put a stop to the
continuing practice by some
well-meaning though misguided
professionals and that dissociative
amnesia is finally removed from
diagnostic manuals. ❚Want to get in touch?
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